Editor and Publisher Reports

Danielle Coffey’s first ew weeks as the News/Media Alliance (NMA) chief executive were anything but "business as usual." After being appointed the new president and CEO of this leading trade organization, representing over 2,000 news and magazine media outlets worldwide, some of the most critical issues and advocacy concerning Western news media's future required immediate attention. That list includes Gannett’s recent stand-alone antitrust filing against Google; Canada's final passage of the Canadian Journalism Compensation Bill, which will require big-tech companies like Google & Facebook to pay news organizations for the content they monetize; and how this may impact the U.S. Congress passing laws that would offer similar compensation to American news outlets. In addition, the congressional support of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA) has reemerged — legislation that would help fund local journalism via tax incentives to publishers for salaries, businesses who invest in advertising suppo

Gannett Co., Inc. filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Google for “monopolization of advertising technology markets and deceptive commercial practices.” According to Gannett’s press release, “The lawsuit seeks to restore competition in the digital advertising marketplace and end Google’s monopoly, which will encourage investment in newsrooms and news content throughout the country.” Others have filed similar lawsuits. A bipartisan group of 17 State Attorneys Generals filed a similar lawsuit against Google for ad-tech monopolization in December 2020. Then, the U.S. Department of Justice, joined by a bipartisan group of 17 additional states, filed an ad-tech lawsuit against Google earlier this year. Both lawsuits are ongoing. Last week, the European Union’s competition authority filed an ad-tech lawsuit against Google, citing similar circumstances. Both the DOJ and EU suits are seeking monetary damages and fines, as well as the breakup of Google’s ad-t

To say that Peter Bhatia is a successful newspaper editor would be akin to stating that Tom Brady was a good quarterback. As Bhatia reminisces during this vodcast interview with E&P Publisher Mike Blinder, when he left Stanford in 1975 to begin his journalism career, the first operation he worked at was using "hot type”  typesetting to lay out the daily edition. Since those early days, Bhatia has managed newsrooms that collectively have won 10 Pulitzer Prizes. He spent time in academia as the Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism director at Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism. Bhatia was president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and received the 2020 "Benjamin Bradlee Editor of the Year Award" from the National Press Foundation. He is the first journalist of South Asian descent to lead a major daily newspaper in the U.S. And was featured on the cover of E&P Magazine as our 2008 "Editor of the Year." For the last seven years, Bhatia was part of the Gannett/

As E&P Reported in our February 2023 cover story, "Labor puts it all on the line,” 2022 was a very active year for union membership, walkouts and strikes. And perhaps no one knows this more than Jon Schleuss, the president of The NewsGuild - Communications Workers of America (TNG-CWA). Schleuss grew up in rural Arkansas, as he admits, in a "very republican world," where the idea of unions and strikes was far from the political discourse he and his family would ever discuss. Schleuss entered journalism at a young age at his college radio station. After graduation, he worked for Wehco Media as the online editor of their second-largest newspaper, The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Later, he joined the Los Angeles Times as a data and graphics journalist, becoming involved in organized labor by being one of a small group that helped unionize the Times in 2018. In 2019, Schleuss ran for and won the presidency of the NewsGuild, where he has led their membership of more than 25,000 workers within over 200 m

There are hundreds of Evan Brandts in our industry today, doing their jobs alone or in a greatly reduced newsroom, working the same beats covered by tens or hundreds more just a few years ago. It’s easy to cite the reasons for the growth of what many today call "ghost papers," where a community is being underserved in local news coverage. Some blame it on the unregulated "Big Tech" industry that monetizes content while also absorbing local advertising revenues that rightly belong to the news publisher. Others call it evolution, where "survival of the fittest" is tested as legacy media adapts to a multimedia culture. And many blame the corporate greed of hedge funds, which found a quick way to generate short-term profits, by buying up local newspapers and selling off their assets, with little regard for the mission to their local communities — providing that independent, constitutionally-mandated "check on power."  Before his April 2022 appearance on "60 Minutes," odds are you never even heard of Evan Brandt

In 1952, Arthur and Morley Ballantine wanted to enter the news publishing industry, and they picked southwest Colorado as the place to do it — purchasing a publication that is now the Durango Herald. Over the years, the company expanded, adding new titles, video services, digital services, and local phone directories to its publishing empire. And today, their son, Richard G. Ballentine is chairman of the board ofBallentine Communications, continuing a mission of serving the readers and businesses of the region. Recently, the company announced it was opening offices and hiring staff just 60 miles away, in Farmington, New Mexico, to start a brand new, free tabloid called the Tri-City Record that will print five days a week. Farmington has a population of 46,000+ and is the largest city in San Juan County (population 120,000). The city has been served by its newspaper of record, The Farmington Daily Times, for over 120 years. However, today that Gannett publication might be labeled by some as a “ghost paper,” ha

For over 15 years, Mickey H. Osterreicher has served as general counsel to the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), where he helps support, train and advocate for First Amendment rights. Starting his journalism career in the 1970s, Mickey was a staff photojournalist as an undergraduate for his campus newspaper at the University of Buffalo. He later became an award-winning photojournalist whose work has been published and broadcast over the years by the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today, ABC World News Tonight, Nightline, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News and ESPN. Mickey returned to UB to get his law degree in 1998, where he served as an adjunct professor. However, not only does Osterreicher have an extensive news media background, but he also wears a shield — serving for over 30 years as a reserve deputy for the Erie County Sheriff’s Office. He was recognized as their ‘Reserve Deputy of the Year’ in 2017. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) honored Osterreicher in

The daily Portland Press Herald and its statewide sister publication Maine Sunday Telegram were, for over a century, the leading news and information providers to residents of Maine. Based in the state's largest city of Portland, these two major newspapers were the cornerstones of Guy Gannett Communications. This Maine-based family-owned business also owned a handful of television stations. In 1998, Guy Gannett decided to sell the entire company, with the newspaper holdings eventually purchased by the owners of The Seattle Times, the fourth generation of the Blethen family. Ten years later, during the 2008 recession, these titles began a journey of cutbacks and downsizing like so many other media companies. And, citing economic concerns, the Blethens announced they were putting the Press Herald and its other Maine newspaper properties up for sale. The next seven years, the newspapers went through two controversial ownership changes — eventually finding themselves in 2015 in the hands of Maine-based publisher

A recent Gallup/Knight Foundation study revealed, "Only 26% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the news media, the lowest level since Gallup and Knight began tracking in 2017.”  But this study also suggests: "Many Americans are not solely skeptical of news today — they feel distrust on an emotional level, believing news organizations intend to mislead them and are indifferent to the social and political impact of their reporting.” The main takeaway from the study may be that it states: “Emotional trust is more deeply rooted and is especially important to understand in the context of the news media. This study shows that emotional trust has a strong relationship to perceptions and behaviors that could harm the critical, mutually beneficial relationship between the health of the press and the health of U.S. democracy. The more emotional trust Americans have in the news, the more likely they are to say news organizations balance staying in business and serving the public well.” These findings, published by

To those media executives that attend major conferences or keep their "ears to the ground" through industry news blogs and sites, Guy Tasaka is already well known as an expert and resource that many have followed to stay on top of technology and navigate the turbulent waters of the ever-changing media landscape. Guy's innovative career spans decades as senior director of product management at WideOrbit, general manager of mobile at GateHouse Media, vice president and chief digital officer at Calkins Media, a sales and strategic leader at The New York Times, and most recently, the founding manager of the Google News Initiative (GNI) funded Local Media Association Technology Resource Center. Beginning this month, Guy has added another position to his LinkedIn profile: Technology Columnist for Editor & Publisher Magazine (E&P). Guy's first assignment for E&P was to cover the world’s largest gathering (65,000+) of electronic media professionals and innovators — the 2023 National Association of Broadc

According to a recent report from the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy, total giving from all sources in the U.S. rose from $124.31 billion in 1993 to just over $360 billion last year (2022). However, the report cites that the total giving figure has continued to track closely with the size of the U.S. economy, where the overall "giving " figure remained at roughly 2% of the national GDP over those 20 years. What the report does show as a major shift is a change from total giving coming from individuals versus foundations, the giving coming from foundations rising significantly, from less than 7% in 1992 to nearly 19% of all giving today. As more and more news publishers seek innovative sustainable new revenue models to offset the cost of their newsrooms, more and more money is becoming available to support local journalism through philanthropic entities. In this episode of E&P Reports, we explore "The Chronicle of Philanthropy" (CoP), a monthly magazine that covers the nonprofit world and is r

Imagine you are managing a downsized, metro, state capital newsroom. Within four weeks, your newsroom covers once-in-a-generation tornado devastation, a school shooting that takes the lives of six individuals, a legislature that expels two minority members erupting into a globally watched real-time protest, the crash of two Black Hawk helicopters that took nine lives at nearby Fort Campbell and the passage of several local and statewide anti-LBGTQ bills, one that bans the performance of drag shows. Additionally, you are assigning reporters, shooters, and editors while operating on a hybrid schedule where not all in your newsroom work within a single location. Finally, add to that the fact that your newsroom not only has to feed multi-platform, real-time content to your statewide audience, but you are also under a mandate to act as the regional hub for a national network with all their readers turning their attention to the community you report on. Well, you don’t have to imagine what that single month of jour

On April 5, 2019, Alec Johnson, the editor & publisher of The Waterville Times, the flagship publication of the Johnson Newspaper Corporation, of which he is also president, penned an editorial entitled “Readers think newspapers are doing fine: here’s the truth.”  Within the article, one can almost feel his frustrations, citing a Pew Research survey that stated 71% of Americans believed that local news media organizations were doing well financially, while just 14 percent said they have directly paid for "local news services.” Perhaps that article was intended as a “warning shot” to the readers within the communities his newspapers served; like many publishers, Johnson Newspapers could not continue financing his newsrooms at the same pace in a culture of declining circulation and advertising revenues. In less than 60 days, on June 14, 2019, Johnson announced they were shutting down the only four newspapers that served the 100,000+ residents of St. Lawrence County, New York, which included the 100+-year-o

There’s no question that Evening Post Publishing, owners of the Charleston Post and Courier (P&C), have been expanding their commitment to local journalism, while other media companies publishing in South Carolina have been downsizing their newsrooms. E&P initially reported in July of 2020 that the P&C had opened news operations in Greenville, where Gannett owned the legacy title, and in Myrtle Beach, a  McClatchy market. And again, in June of 2022, E&P published a feature story on how even though 10 South Carolina newspapers had already shut down during a global pandemic, the Post & Courier had launched their "Uncovered" project, adding and assigning journalists to different state regions to cover. But recently, as Executive Editor Autumn Phillips stated, "The Post and Courier has gone all-in by strategically expanding from a core market publication to a statewide newsroom. In each new community, we’ve incubated different models to identify the combination of funding and beat approaches

On its website, the Journalism Funding Partners (JFP) states a mission to “Increase the depth, diversity and sustainability of local journalism by building and stewarding connections between funders and news organizations.” Founded as a 501 (C)(3) in 2019 by the former publisher of the Raleigh News & Observer, Orage Quarles and internationally recognized reporter and senior consultant for the Democracy Fund, Sheila Solomon. JFP has secured and managed more than $5 million in grants to help support new and existing journalism coverage. One of the funding projects that the JFP coordinated allowed for the Nashville Tennessean to create its first beat solely dedicated to covering local First Amendment issues. Thanks to these funds, Angele Latham has been winning national attention with her local reporting on the Sumner County (TN) governing board’s passage of an amendment declaring that the county would uphold “Judeo-Christian values.” Latham also was responsible for recent, in-depth coverage of current Tenne

On February 21, 2023, six news publishing companies: The Baltimore Banner, Block Club Chicago, The Colorado Sun, the Daily Memphian, Long Beach Post and Lookout Local/Lookout Santa Cruz, announced they were forming an organization they collectively called the Alliance for Sustainable Local News (ASLN). Their industry press release stated these six publishers all shared a “belief in the power of local news to make communities and people’s lives better.” These six have also “found common ground in the successful building of new high-quality, trustworthy, non-partisan news organizations, large enough to serve their communities’ primary news needs.” And “share fundamental values in the greater movement to revive, reinvent and renew the kind of local news journalism communities all across North America deserve.” Over the last two decades, ASLN founding member, author and industry analyst Ken Doctor has been known not to “pull punches” regarding his opinions about how hedge funds and large corporations have been hu

On February 8, 2023, the citizens of Pulaski, TN were shocked to hear that their 167-year-old newspaper was to be shut down. Then owner David Lake, along with publisher Scott Stewart announced in a statement that: “Declining advertising and subscription revenues combined with increasing costs, finally reached a point where maintaining the Pulaski (Tennessee) Citizen as a business has not been possible, and that county will have no newspaper or news platform dedicated solely to covering local news, sports, events, government and people.” Pulaski is a city in the county seat of Giles County, located on the central-southern border of Tennessee, where Wikipedia shows a 2020 population recorded as 8,397. The city lies halfway between Nashville, TN and Huntsville, AL, on the I-65 corridor. The paper’s publisher Scott Stewart, who was born in Pulaski and began as a reporter at the paper in 1995 stated in the closing announcement: “As devastating as this is for those of us who cherish what local news is and means to

For two decades, Dr. Richard Haass has been the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan think tank organization that states this mission on its website: “To help people better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries.” Also, his expertise in international affairs and U.S. foreign policy has been tapped by our government, acting as the chair for the multiparty negotiations in Northern Ireland in 2012. From 2001 to 2003, Haass was the director of policy planning for the Department of State, acting as a principal advisor to Colin Powell during the war in Iraq.   However, most of us know Richard Haass from his many appearances on national newscasts and as a consultant to NBC News — providing context to stories centering on international relations and our foreign policy. And within these decades of work, he has managed to find time to author over a dozen books that center on helping us understand the complexities of our plac

Ryan Dohrn is a motivational speaker, won an Emmy for sales & marketing, has been recognized by Forbes.com with the “Best of the Web” award for his business strategies and is considered one of the top media sales trainers in the world today. Since 2008, Dohrn’s Brain Swell Media consulting company has helped over 200 media companies find new revenue through innovative sales strategies and his unique ad sales training. Today, Dohrn is also the owner and CEO of Niche Media, an organization that claims its "ethos" is centered around creating events that bring together like-minded media pros to help drive revenue through niche publishing. Hundreds gather at the yearly Niche Media Conference to attend programs focusing on revenue generation, sales training, audience growth, and emerging media trends. In this 176th episode of "E&P Reports," we go one-on-one with multimedia sales guru Ryan Dohrn to gain new ideas he shares on how news publishers can grow top-line revenue in the ever-increasing turbulence in

The Medford, Oregon Mail Tribune can trace its roots back to 1909 when the morning Medford Mail and afternoon Tribune merged under the Putnam family, creating what the paper claimed to be "The largest printing and publishing establishment in Southern Oregon.” It was decades later that this venerable brand would begin a journey of "swap and sale," moving from Down jones/ Ottaway ownership to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., to Newcastle Investment Corp. (an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group) and later merging into the growing Gatehouse Media Group. Gatehouse sold the Mail Tribune in 2017 to media businessman Steven Saslow and its sister paper, the Ashland Daily Tidings, for $15 million. Saslow then reportedly secured financing from the right-wing-centered Sinclair broadcast group that same week, according to public records obtained by Jefferson Public Radio. Shortly after the purchase, the paper began working under the ownership name of Rosebud Media in conjunction with the Sinclair-owned TV station in Medfor